Bharat Gupt

Bharat Gupt is a scholar who moves easily between ancient Athens and ancient India. His work on Greek and Indian theatre has changed how many people think about both. In 2025 he was named for the Padma Shri in the field of art, from Delhi ^[1].

Greek and Indian theatre

Gupt was born on 28 November 1946 ^[2]. He is a classicist, theatre theorist, musicologist and columnist, trained both in Western universities and in the traditional way under gurus ^[2]. His book Dramatic Concepts: Greek and Indian, first published in 1994, argues that ancient Greek drama had much in common with the techniques of ancient Indian theatre, and is widely used as a teaching text ^[2]. He is regarded as an authority on the Natyashastra, the ancient Indian treatise on performance ^[2].

He held the Onassis Fellowship to research ancient Greek theatre, and has taught in India, North America, Europe and Greece for more than fifty years ^[2].

A musician too

Gupt is a trained sitar and surbahar player who learned sitar from Pandit Uma Shankar Mishra ^[2]. He wrote on the ancient scales of Indian music in a 1996 study of chapter 28 of the Natyashastra ^[2].

Explaining the classics

A former associate professor at the University of Delhi, he has been vice-chairman of the National School of Drama and a trustee of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts ^[2]. He explains classical Sanskrit texts in the traditional commentary style, reading the original before translating and analysing it, and has published hundreds of hours of video lectures online ^[2].